Vittum Foreign Attack update

For those of you who don't know, I have created a few custom sets for KBO foreign players under the name Vittum Foreign Attack, since foreigners are not included in the Korean released sets. Thus far, I have created sets for years 2015, 2016 and 2017. The serials for each are 2015 (/20), 2016 (/20) and 2017 (/25). In the past I would take a poll to see how many would be interested and order that amount or a few more.

2015	2016	2017

Well, last year I ordered 20 sets for my 2015 set but I still have nine remaining since people backed out or haven't responded. I have considered quitting it all together but have instead decided to push forward and create as many years of KBO foreign player sets as I can but limiting the serial run to ten, maybe 15.

I am currently working on a 2018 set and am about 65% finished. I touched it for the first time in several months. I have also considered using a different printing company that would be significantly cheaper but it would require me to have the sheets shipped to me and cut them myself. I have a guillotine cutter at work that should suffice but I'm afraid I wouldn't make all the cards universally uniform so I may stick with the company I have been using. If you are reading this for the first time and may be interested in a set, please let me know.

For those of you who have purchased my sets the past few years, thanks for your support and your interest in Korean baseball.

Dan

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Haitai Homerun Balls

I've known about these for sometime but wasn't overly concerned about completing the set and thought I'd find one here or there. Haitai, who used to have their own team in the KBO, the Haitai Tigers, who became the Kia Tigers in 2002, released a set of mini cards in the Homerun Ball chocolate snack treats starting in 2006. After speaking with a fellow Lee Seung-yuop collector, there appears to be 23 cards in the set (22 in image). I currently own five of them.

A 2006 Haitai Homerun Ball mini card

Not sure if anyone has heard or read about this topic from me before, but I found a Korean blog that has more ads and a brief summary from the Korean blogger about the Haitai Homerun Balls. I couldn't post asking questions because I'm not a member of that blogging site. The reason I am posting is because he mentions Calbee in his blog but I am not sure if he thinks they released them. I know Calbee, a Japanese confectionary, has released food-issued trading cards for a long time. I want to break down the commerical and ads I have seen. I would not have doubted that Calbee may have released these in Japan but I spoke with a Japanese friend who told me he never saw them for sale in Japan and that it was indeed a Korean-only product, as I suspected.

COMMERCIAL: First, in the commercial you will see Lee Seung-yuop driving a car while seated in the right seat, which would make this recorded in Japan, not Korea. Secondly, the Haitai Homerun Ball jersey he is wearing is in the colors of the Yomiuri Giants (Tokyo). Thirdly, the blog states the commercial aired in 2006 while the YouTube video information specifically stated it aired on Sept 9, 2006. The jersey he is wearing in the commercial is #33, which he wore in his first of five years with Yomiuri in 2006 but changed to #25 in 2007-2010. Lastly, all of the snack packaging (Haitai) and commericial writing is in Korean. There was no mention of Calbee in the commercial.

Link to: 2006 Haitai Homerun Ball commercial (Unable to embed)

ADVERTISEMENTS: Like the commercial and the cards, all the text in the ads is Korean

There even appears to be baseball's released over this product

I submitted the five mini cards that I own to PSA but they were N9'd (unable to identify) this week. I will have to be more diligent about giving them the info I have. Also, next time I will attempt to call them 2006 Haitai Homerun Ball, which sounds better, than 2006 Haitai Confectionery as I had listed on the online submission form.

RELATED LINKS:
https://starplanet.tistory.com/1804
https://blog.naver.com/kkc00700/30126159668
https://blog.naver.com/paranzui/50008197451

My most recent two submissions at PSA.

These are two submissions currently at PSA. This is mostly a note for myself so I know what I have submitted but thought others may be interested to see.



1958 Mitsuwa Menko JCM 129 Masaichi Kaneda #AS
1994 Teleca #16 Jong-Beom Lee
1994 Teleca #17 Jong-Beom Lee
1994 Teleca #18 Jong-Beom Lee
1999 Teleca Golden Glove Phone Card #NNO Seung Y. Lee
2000 Teleca '99 Korea Japan Super Game #KJ23 Seung Y. Lee / Min-Tae Chung
2000 Teleca '99 Korea Japan Super Game #KJ46 Seung Y. Lee / Sadaharu Oh
2000 Teleca '99 Korea Japan Super Game Phone Card #NNO Seung Y. Lee / Min-Tae Chung
2000 Teleca '99 Korea Japan Super Game Phone Card #NNO Seung Y. Lee / Hideki Matsui
2000 Teleca '99 Korea Japan Super Game Phone Card #NNO Seung Y. Lee / Sadaharu Oh
2005 BBM Gold #621 Seung Y. Lee
2005 Chiba Lotte Marines Playing Card #7D Seung Y. Lee
2005 Konami Baseball Heroes Black Special #044 Seung Y. Lee
2005 Konami Baseball Heroes White #159 Seung Y. Lee
2006 Haitai Confectionery Homerun Ball #NNO Seung Y. Lee
2006 Haitai Confectionery Homerun Ball #NNO Seung Y. Lee
2006 Haitai Confectionery Homerun Ball #NNO Seung Y. Lee
2006 Haitai Confectionery Homerun Ball #NNO Seung Y. Lee
2006 Haitai Confectionery Homerun Ball #NNO Seung Y. Lee
2006 Konami Baseball Heroes 2 Black Special #044 Seung Y. Lee
2006 Konami Baseball Heroes 2 Power Up Version Great #010 Seung Y. Lee
2006 Konami Baseball Heroes 2 White #160 Seung Y. Lee
2006 SP Authentic WBC Future Watch #WBC-70 Seung Y. Lee
2006 Upper Deck Inaugural Images #II-20 Seung Y. Lee
2006 Upper Deck Ovation Ovation Nation #ON-SL Seung Y. Lee
2007 BBM Touch the Game #118 Seung Y. Lee
2007 BBM Yomiuri Giants Triple Bat Card GM4 Seung Y. Lee
2007 Konami Baseball Heroes 3 Black #194 Seung Y. Lee
2007 Konami Baseball Heroes 3 Power Up Black #004 Seung Y. Lee
2007 Yomiuri Giants Playing Card #5C Seung Y. Lee
2007 Yomiuri Giants Playing Card #5D Seung Y. Lee
2008 Konami Baseball Heroes Black #015 Seung Y. Lee
2008 Yomiuri Giants Players Day #25 Seung Y. Lee
2009 Konami Baseball Heroes Black #135 Seung Y. Lee
2009 Yomiuri Giants Giants Winning Game Card #7 Seung Y. Lee
2009 Yomiuri Giants Giants Winning Game Card #26 Seung Y. Lee
2009 Yomiuri Giants Players Day #25 Seung Y. Lee
2010 Bandai Owners League #008 Seung Y. Lee
2010 BBM 20th Anniversary Yomiuri Giants Parallel #G047 Seung Y. Lee
2010 BBM Yomiuri Giants G126 Parallel Seung Y. Lee
2010 Konami Baseball Heroes Opening Version White #006 Seung Y. Lee
2011 Bandai Owners League #055 Seung Y. Lee
2011 Konami Baseball All Stars #091 Seung Y. Lee
2011 Konami Baseball Heroes Opening Version White #056 Seung Y. Lee
2011 Konami Baseball Heroes Test Issue #019 Seung Y. Lee
2011 Orix Buffaloes #3 Seung Y. Lee
2015 Ntreev Duael Superstar Season One #112 Seung Y. Lee
2016 SMG Ntreev Baseball's Best Players Forever Ace #SA002 Seung Y. Lee
2019 Epoch #04 Seung Y. Lee
2019 Epoch Gold #04 Seung Y. Lee
50 cards



1993 BBM #423 Hideki Matsui
1993 Tomy #102 Ichiro Suzuki
1999 Teleca Korean #19 Tyrone Woods
2000 Teleca 2000 Sydney Olympics Korea Team Phone Cards #NNO Seung Y. Lee
2001 Teleca 2000 Golden Glove Phone Card #NNO Seung Y. Lee
2004 BBM #OB4 Parallel Seung Y. Lee
2004 BBM Sports Card Magazine #37
2004 Konami #CN236 Seung Y. Lee
2007 BBM #343 Silver Signature Seung Y. Lee
2007 BBM Yomiuri Giants #G064 Parallel Seung Y. Lee
2007 Yomiuri Giants #NNO Seung Y. Lee
2007 Giants Magazine Monthly January #NNO Seung Y. Lee
2008 BBM Yomiuri Giants #G049 Seung Y. Lee
2008 BBM Yomiuri Giants #G100 Seung Y. Lee
2008 BBM Yomiuri Giants #G100 Parallel Seung Y. Lee
2009 BBM 1st Version #238 Seung Y. Lee
2009 BBM Yomiuri Giants #G046 Gold Signature Seung Y. Lee
2009 BBM Yomiuri Giants #G046 Red Signature Seung Y. Lee
2010 Yomiuri Giants Giants Winning Game #7 Seung Y. Lee
2010 Yomiuri Giants Giants Winning Game #26 Seung Y. Lee
2010 Yomiuri Giants #G047 Gold Signature Seung Y. Lee
2010 Yomiuri Giants #NNO Seung Y. Lee
2019 Epoch Lotte Orions Marines 50th Anniversary #4 Gold Parallel Seung Y. Lee (x2)
2014 Pokemon Korean Evolutions Mega Blastoise EX #015
24 cards

On deck:
1999 Samsung Lions Lee Seung-Yuop Sniper postcards (x17)
1999 Teleca Premium Super Teleca #1
2000 Teleca '99 Korea Japan Super Game #KJ20
2000 Teleca '99 Korea Japan Super Game #KJ43
2004 BBM Touch the Game Ball #B12
2010 BBM Yomiuri Giants Bat Card #GM2 /100
2011 Orix Buffaloes #BsG5
2011 BBM Orix Buffaloes Gold Signature #45 parallel /100
2011 BBM Orix Buffaloes Jersey Card #BsM2
2016-17 SMG Ntreev Super Star Black Edition #001-SS /50
2018 Epoch Orix Buffaloes Stars & Legends Gold #26 /10

Off topic: Star Trek and baseball

I wanted to make a post for this because of how excited I am about it, although it's a few years old.

I'm a Star Trek fan and Deep Space Nine is my favorite series for various reasons. I met Avery Brooks a few times at conventions I attended in 2012 and 2013. At the first convention I bought a 8x10 at his desk to have him sign, but before the second convention I thought his character through some more and I brought a MLB ball to have him sign because his character was a huge baseball fan. I had him sign the ball with his name and his character's name. For a Star Trek souvenir, I thought it was tops...



Until this.. I'm a huge fan of baseball, a Trekkie, and love the episode, "In the Cards." I'm sure most of you know it. It's Season 5 Episode 25 where Jake is adament about buying the Willie Mays rookie card from an auction of Quark's. He and Nog weren't able to win the auction but after going through various obstacles they finally attain it and give it to Benjamin at the end.

Video clips of episode
Link 1
Link 2

So, to my story of how it happened. I'm not sure I can come up with a more creative idea (to me anyway) revolving around baseball and DS9. I bought the Willie Mays rookie card reprint, not realizing it was a mini, and joined the FB 50th Star Trek Con group and was able to find a fellow fan to get the autos of actors Aron Eisenberg and Cirroc Lofton for me! I mailed him the card, a protector, and a special marker for autos on cards. After getting the autos at the convention he sent the card to another friend who then sent it to PSA for authentication. Honestly, Im not sure I can top this idea for myself. Im so happy with this outcome. Here it is.

A PSA authenticated Aron Eisenberg and Cirroc Lofton signed 1986 CCC reprint of Willie Mays' 1951 Bowman rookie card. I hope you can appreciate it as much as I do.

2001 Teleca Game Cards

Unlike most Teleca sets at the time, this 2001 set was not sold in packs. These were sold by team in generic paper box sets. The only way to know what team it was in the box was to look at the back where there was a small window to see a partial logo of one of the teams. I had never seen these packaged before, only in their plastic wrap. I knew of most of the foreign players because I had been looking for this set for some time. This is also the only authorized Korean "game" set I know about.

There are eight teams total: Doosan Bears, Lotte Giants, Haitai Tigers, Hanwha Eagles, Hyundai Unicorns, LG Twins, Samsung Lions, and SK Wyverns. Each of these teams has 16-18 cards. These sets are unnumbered and have the players uniform number on the front. I used these numbers for the checklists on TCDB here. I was able to purchase these five teams for $60, including the Lee Seung-yuop which can sell for $20 raw. I know Koreans who are trying to sell these for $20-$50 per team.

To my knowledge, this is the last set of official cards to have foreigners, and the last set Teleca produced. This does not include any team sets issued since (i.e. Doosan's oversized team sets starting in 2011). I still need Haitai, Lotte and LG. These too will be hard to come by, and most likely expensive.


My scanner can't focus well on some items. This is an image of three sets in their boxes. You can see partial logos of teams inside the small window.

This is my best guess as to how play the game. I have never seen dice sold with anything related to this set but I am unsure what else the numbers 2-12 could mean. I also have never seen a boardgame sheet (like the 2014 Duael Ntreev Super Star set had). In Woods' case, his batting ability is 11 and his speed is 2. If you roll a 2-4, it appears you would be out(?), 5-6 would be a hit (안타), 7 is a double (2루), and 8-12 would be a home run (홈런).

In the case of ace pitcher Min-tae Jung, his pitching ability is 9, physical strength as 7. If you produce 2-5 strikeout, 6-7 groundball, 8 flyball, 9 foul ball, 10-12 is surrendering a hit.

Team mascots appear on the back of each player card

Seung-yuop Lee

Chang-yong Lim

Manny Martinez

Tyrone Woods

Mike Farmer

Min-ho Kim

Jin-man Park

Tom Quinlan

Min-tae Chung

Jin-young Lee

Tilson Brito

Sung-woo Kang

Jay Davis

Jae-ho Back

Kyu-soo Cho

I will now be in search of those three teams I need. I have a feeling it will be a while before I spot them, and probably not at an affordable price. It's a shame Teleca didn't stick around beyond 2001. I don't think any official Korean full-league sets were produced between 2002 and 2013. That's a long time to go without baseball cards! (Not counting the unauthorized 2010 set). By that time that bootleg set was released, seven years had passed with no sets being issued by anyone. Guess I'm grateful to whomever made them.

Determining year of Yomiuri Giants playing cards

This is more of a note for myself. I bought two Lee Seung-yuop playing cards a little while ago but just started researching them. I was unsure if they were from the same deck but they have the same back and assumed so. Lee played for the Yomiuri Giants from 2006-2010. I decided to look at the other players in the set I was able to determine in various pictures on websites as I do not have a deck in-hand.

Pitcher Hiroshi Kisanuki is on top of the wrapped deck, thus the only visible card (of wrapped deck). Looking at their roster, I see that he was not on the Giants in 2010 but was for the others years in question. So 2010 is out.



Another image I found was of Koji Uehara and Shinnosuke Abe. I knew Abe was on the team for many years (2001-2019) and was of no help. I knew Uehara played in the MLB but didn't know much else. I looked at his BR bio and it shows he was on the Giants from 1999-2008, he went to play for the Baltimore Orioles in 2009. Thus this card set cannot be from 2009.




So this leaves 2006-2008.

Lee had two different numbers while with the Giants. In his first year, 2006, he wore #33. In the other four years, 2007-2010, he wore #25. In this deck he is wearing #25.. so 2006 is out.



2007-2008 remain.

Looking at other images I've found online, it's too hard to determine the names or players on the rest of the cards. Can you help determine if this is a deck for the 2007 or 2008 Yomiuri Giants?



I am not sure when I will receive the deck in hand from my friend in Japan but wanted to determine ASAP because these two Lee cards will then need to be sent to friends in the US for a PSA submission.

UPDATE: A few hours after posting this, I think I figured it out. I zoomed in and saw a foreign player (#42) too light-skinned to be Marc Kroon. I looked up Kroon and he wasn't a Giant in 2007. I looked up the 2007 Giants roster and I saw Jeremy Powell listed with #42. He was on the Giants in 2006 and 2007 seasons. Kroon came to the team in 2008 so I'm sure this is a 2007 set and I will go with that.

2000 Teleca Korea Japen Super Game phone cards

You may already know about the 2000 Teleca '99 Korea Japan Super Game 46-card set which is a tough one to complete but I didn't know these phone cards, for the same game, existed until I saw them last week on a Naver sports card forum. NPBcardguy did a review on the card set here The images for both the card set and phone card set are the same but the designs are significantly different.

#KJ23

I picked up a batch of 10 but I do not know how many there are all together. I'd much prefer to buy these as a complete set but having never seen these before, I pulled the trigger and bought the ten phone cards. I have no idea how many there are. I would like to complete a full checklist so I can send the Lees for grading.





I do not own the following cards in the paper set thus they are not scanned and uploaded to the TCDB set but I was able to match up the players images to the checklist names:

This would match to be #KJ41 (Min-Ho Kim, Tetsuya Matoyama) This would match to be #KJ44 (Min-Ho Kim, Joon-Hyuk Yang, Dong-Joo Kim) The back of one of the phone cards

I am thinking of uploading these cards as a set to TCDB and insert any I find later.